How to hire a marketer: a step by step guide for small companies

Founders often reach the point of hiring a marketer after doing the work themselves for too long: posting when there is time, boosting a post now and then, paying someone to fix the website once a year. The first hire feels like it should solve all of that at once, which is exactly why it so often disappoints. The person gets a vague brief, no ad budget and a job description written around software names.

This guide walks through how to hire a marketer in the order the decisions should be made: the outcome you need, the type of person that outcome calls for, how to write the role, where to look, how to test applicants on real work, and how to manage someone whose craft you may not fully understand. It is written for a small company making its first or second marketing hire.

Write down the outcome before you write the job post

The most useful hiring document is not the job description. It is a half page you write for yourself answering three questions:

1. What should be different in twelve months? For example: twice as many qualified demo requests per month, or a steady flow of booked jobs from search instead of relying on referrals. Tie it to revenue, not to activity.
2. Which channels are most likely to get you there? If your customers search for what you sell, search ads and SEO come first. If they need to discover you, paid social or content may matter more. You do not need certainty, only a reasoned starting point.
3. What already exists? List the website, ad accounts, email list, CRM, tracking and any vendors. A marketer who inherits a working analytics setup needs different skills from one who has to build tracking from nothing.

This page becomes the brief for everything that follows. It also exposes gaps early: if nobody can say what a lead is worth or where current customers come from, part of the first hire's job is building that measurement, and the role should say so.

Generalist or specialist: match the person to the scope

With the outcome written down, the choice between a generalist and a specialist usually becomes obvious.

• Hire a generalist when the work spans several light channels (a bit of email, some social, website updates, coordinating a designer) and nobody else is organizing marketing at all. A good generalist plans, writes, sets up simple campaigns and keeps things moving. The trade-off: they rarely run a demanding ad account or a technical SEO project at the depth those require.
• Hire a specialist when one channel carries most of the growth plan, such as Google Ads management for a local service business or SEO for a company whose buyers research online for weeks. Depth in that channel is worth more than breadth.

A frequent trap is looking for one person who is senior in strategy, hands-on in five channels and affordable enough for a first hire. That person is extremely rare. If your plan truly needs strategy plus several deep skills, the answer is usually a small team or a mix, not a single hire.

In-house, outsourced or fractional, in brief

Before posting the role, check that a full-time employee is actually the right format. There are three broad options, each covered in more depth elsewhere:

• In-house employee. Full attention, deep knowledge of your product over time, but one person's skill set and a long hiring process. Fits when the scope is stable and fills a full week.
• Outsourced specialists or an agency. Access to several skills without hiring each one, with the risk of less attention if you are a small account. The outsourced vs in-house comparison lays out the trade-offs.
• Fractional. A senior marketer or a small team for part of the week, useful when you need experience but not forty hours of it. The fractional marketing team page describes one version of this.

Many small companies combine them: a fractional lead sets the plan, and one in-house generalist or a pair of outsourced specialists carry out the work. Whatever format you pick, the rest of this guide still applies, because you still need a clear brief, a way to test the work and a way to judge the first months.

How to write the role so the right people apply

Most marketing job posts are a list of tools followed by a list of personality traits. Replace that with a post built around your outcome:

• The goal: one or two sentences on what success looks like in a year, taken from your outcome page.
• The channels and the split of time: for example, roughly half on paid search, a quarter on the website and landing pages, the rest on email.
• What exists and what is missing: honest detail about the current accounts, tracking and budget, including whether there is an ad budget and roughly how it will grow.
• Who they report to and who approves work: applicants want to know if the founder signs off on every post.
• How you will evaluate applicants: say up front that there is a paid trial task. Serious people appreciate it; people who dislike being tested self-select out.

Keep tools as a short line near the end. Someone who has run campaigns well in one ad platform can learn another in weeks. Someone who knows every tool but cannot connect spend to revenue will not learn that from your onboarding.

Screening applicants: portfolio, paid trial and questions

Marketers are good at presenting themselves, so the screening process should rely on evidence rather than on how polished someone sounds.

Portfolio review. Ask for two or three pieces of past work with context: what the goal was, what they did personally, and what happened. Be wary of screenshots of results with no explanation of the starting point or of their own role in the team.

A paid trial task. Give the applicants who pass the first call a short task on your real business, limited to a few hours, and pay for their time. Examples: audit your search ad account and list the five changes they would make first, or outline a 90-day plan for one channel with how they would measure it. You learn how they think, how they write and whether they ask good questions before starting.

Questions that reveal judgment:

• Tell me about a campaign that did not work. How did you find out, and what did you change?
• How would you decide whether our budget is too small for this channel?
• What would you need from me in the first two weeks?
• Which metric do you watch most closely for a business like ours, and why that one rather than click-through rate?

Strong answers mention specific numbers, trade-offs and what they learned. Weak ones stay at the level of enthusiasm.

What a good first 90 days looks like

Agree on the first 90 days before the start date, so both sides know what to expect. A realistic shape:

• Days 1 to 30: learn and fix the foundations. Access to every account, conversations with a few customers and with whoever handles sales, a review of tracking. Expect fixes to measurement, such as call tracking or proper UTM parameters on links, rather than new campaigns.
• Days 31 to 60: launch the plan in one channel. The main channel from your outcome page gets restructured or launched, with weekly notes on what changed and why.
• Days 61 to 90: first read of results and the next plan. A short written review: what was spent, what came back, what was learned, and a proposal for the next quarter including any budget changes.

What you should not demand in this window is a finished growth engine. What you should expect is visible progress: working tracking, a clear plan, one channel running properly and a person who communicates without being chased.

Managing a marketer when you cannot judge the craft

Many founders hire a marketer precisely because they do not know marketing, and then struggle to tell whether the work is good. You do not need to understand bidding strategies to manage well. You need a few habits.

• A monthly report in plain language that ties spend to leads and customers by channel, with a short explanation of changes. The article on what a monthly marketing report should include gives a template.
• Written plans before big changes, so you can ask why before money moves, not after.
• An occasional outside review. Once or twice a year, pay an independent specialist to look over the main account. It keeps everyone honest and is far less awkward when agreed at the start.
• Questions about reasoning, not tactics. Ask what they expected, what happened and what they will do differently. The quality of those answers tells you more than any dashboard.

Common mistakes when hiring a first marketer

The same few mistakes show up again and again in small companies:

• Hiring for tools instead of outcomes. A post that lists software gets people who know software. Hire for the result you described in your outcome page.
• No budget for ads or content. A paid marketer with no media budget is limited to organic work that takes months to show. Decide the working budget alongside the salary.
• No data to work from. If sales does not record where leads come from and the website has no conversion tracking, the first months go to plumbing. Plan for that instead of being surprised by it.
• One person expected to be a team. Strategy, design, ads, SEO, email and analytics rarely live in one head at the depth each needs.
• Skipping the trial task because an applicant interviewed well. Interviews test conversation; the task tests the job.

If running the search and screening yourself is not realistic, one alternative is to have the team matched for you. At Marketers.com, a free marketing analysis comes first as a PDF within 24 hours, then a senior project manager with 15+ years of experience matches a vetted marketer or a small team to your industry and scope. The how it works page explains the steps.

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